The Hong Kong Innovation-Knowledge Enterprise Award

Congratulations to one of my clients, who is one of the award-winners of the “Innovation-Knowledge Enterprise Award” which is co-organized by the Hong Kong Productivity Council and Guangdong Provincial Intellectual Property Office since 2004.

This award is targeted with a view to increase the Intellectual Property (“IP”) management capability of Hong Kong and mainland enterprises. When the enterprises are facing the arising challenges from the Pearl River Delta region due to the economic upsurge, this award serves as a tool to upgrade them from Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) to Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) and Original Brand Manufacturer (OBM).

As it is commonly known, or recognized, that there are tremendous infringement products from the mainland China, this award become more important, meaningful and perhaps sarcastic!

My client is a product development and investment company. The main business is to identify product improvement opportunity and invest in the design, whereby intellectual protection is the major vehicle to protect the return on investment.

My client is involved in inventions related to product improvement and new product design. The areas of improvement include improvisation on functionality, durability, cost in production and maintenance. They have the core design and management team resides in Hong Kong and has a manufacturing facility in Dongguan where a team of draftsmen, testing engineers and production workers helps the design, prototyping, testing and pilot run process. With more than 150 workers, the Dongguan factory also produces products that export to North America, Europe and Middle East.

My client has applied and obtained more than 10 patents for design done before 2006. All of these patents are now commercialized and products being sold or licenses granted to US companies. Since 2006, the group has filed more than 15 patent applications per year in the PRC, United States, and European Community. Currently, they own more than 70 patents or patents pending right in these countries/community. Non-exclusive license rights for about one-third of patents pending are granted to companies which expects to market products using these new invention in their respective countries. Of course, we handle most of their intellectual property related work.

Further information about the Award can be found here:

http://www.hkpc.org/html/eng/award_schemes/award_schemes.jsp#awards6

http://www.itc.gov.hk/

http://www.cedb.gov.hk/about/index.htm

Back to the blog

I am back to the blog! Isn’t it funny or ironic?

My blog is 3 years old, it is always here. I remember the time when I created it on 26 December 2006. Yes, the Boxing Day, a warm morning when I woke up after a great meal with a few bottles of wine on Christmas day with my family and friends. As usual, I switched on my computer after two cups of coffee, I decided to create my own blog! Well, being a blogger is a good choice of gift for myself. It may be a bit late as a Christmas gift but just perfect timing as a New Year gift.

Time flies … I am not an active blogger!

It is obvious that I do not spend time on this “gift” as I have been busy in my business. My last article was written in early June 2009, so you may imagine how many phone calls, emails, paperwork I have dealt with and how many meetings, negotiations and trips I have taken during these six months!

From now to the coming Boxing Day, I am sure I would spend more time here as I really want to share with you all my experience and thoughts on patents, trademarks, true or fake products, the news around us in China and the World, and so on.

4 June 1989 Tiananmen Square

It has been 20 years.

Let us have a moment for those who were killed, hurt, and deprived of human rights since then. There are activists still kept in prison because of what happened 20 years ago.

There are many ways to show we are concerned. Here is one of them:
My Square is Tiananmen Square - Solidarity photo action

The Chinese government also shows their concern by shutting down web access to a lot of sites in the past few days, including twitter. People in Southern China also cannot watch Hong Kong TV that they used to watch in the past.

Chinese Bidder on Yves St. Laurent Auction Refuses to Pay $40 Million

I think that caught a lot of attention lately, in particular, the Chinese guy who succeed in bidding the Chinese Bronze Rat Head and Rabbit Head last week at Christie's.

This 'winner' hold a press conference on 2 Mar 2009, proudly saying that he will not pay, and the other spokesperson in the press conference said (in Chinese) "The world has learnt a lesson".

I think we learnt that lesson long time ago and this press conference just reinforce our learning:
We demand money on account for all Chinese customers, no matter they are new or recurring customers. In particular, when it is time for filing of application that we need to pay for government fee, we felt as urgent as the client. That is, if they don't pay us money on account, we will not pay on their behalf for any government fee.

We do understanding inventors / companies do have cash flow problem from time to time, but holding a press conference and say that out loud (and proudly) "... what I want to stress is that I will not pay" is a little bit too much.

See the related news here: http://abcnews.go.com/International/Business/story?id=6987633&page=1

Meeting fellow professional in Facebook

From time to time, I have questions such as trademark registration in Indonesia and Italy. Apart from Google, I am also using facebook to look for fellow professional and groups in other countries. I found that very useful.